


all the good we did not do

by Damkianna



Category: Dark Matter (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Forgiveness, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Prison, Rescue, Season/Series 02, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29599698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: Arietis-14 wasn't arranged like Hyperion-8 had been. The main prison block wasn't an open gallery, cells along the walls and tables in the middle; instead, it was a square split up into quarters, three levels of cells on each arm extending into what would otherwise have been unused space.Which meant it had a lot of corners tucked away that weren't visible from most of the block, one of which Six could wedge his aching body into until he had a chance to stop the bleeding.
Relationships: Six | Griffin Jones/Three | Marcus Boone
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6
Collections: Black Is Beautiful 2021





	all the good we did not do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cherryontop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryontop/gifts).



> All your prompts were so good I had to combine a couple of them, cherryontop—this is both "in prison together" fic and "Six still feels guilty and enjoys suffering for it, Three figures that out and does something about it" fic. With a dash of implied "they're going to be undercover as prison fuckbuddies" for flavor. :D I hope you like it, and that you've had a wonderful BiB!
> 
> This is set post-2.06 (aka the episode where Six and Three are trapped in the _Marauder_ together), but otherwise is a handwaved scenario that probably would not fit into the actual S2 timeline. Title adapted from a quote from Voltaire, which struck me as extremely Six in spirit:
> 
> "A minister of state is excusable for the harm he does when the helm of government has forced his hand in a storm; but in the calm he is guilty of all the good he does not do."

Arietis-14 wasn't arranged like Hyperion-8 had been. The main prison block wasn't an open gallery, cells along the walls and tables in the middle; instead, it was a square split up into quarters, three levels of cells on each arm extending into what would otherwise have been unused space.

Which meant it had a lot of corners tucked away that weren't visible from most of the block, one of which Six could wedge his aching body into until he had a chance to stop the bleeding.

He managed to curl one throbbing hand over the gash in his side, and then he closed his eyes and let his head tip back against the wall. His nose had mostly stopped, though he was pretty sure it was broken; his lip was split in a few places, his chin sticky with it, but that wasn't going to kill him. Side might, if he let it bleed long enough.

Which he wasn't going to. He wasn't going to make it that easy—for them, or for himself.

The truth was, he was almost relieved.

He drew a long slow breath, lip stinging. He ought to be coming up with some kind of a plan. He ought to be thinking about what he was going to do next, how he was going to handle his time in here; how he was going to start figuring out how to get out, and how he was going to find the _Raza_ again once he did.

Except he didn't want to. He didn't want to, and he wasn't even sure he should.

After all, he'd earned this.

Literally, for one: he'd known what would happen when he'd turned around, when he'd run toward the GA instead of toward the _Marauder_ and he'd thrown that flash grenade. That had been the whole point. There just hadn't been enough time; it had been obvious to him that Two wasn't going to be able to get through the launch sequence before the GA caught up to them, and he'd understood exactly what to do about it.

But on a deeper level, this had been waiting for him since Hyperion-8. This had been waiting for him since the day he'd decided to signal the GA, since he'd let the rest of the crew tear themselves apart pointing fingers at each other and he hadn't said a word.

He'd been welcomed right back into the GA. His old rank, his old partner, everything, like none of it had ever happened. Oh, he'd been put on probation for a little while; just getting his personnel file updated, his biometrics reactivated, or at least that was what they'd said. In retrospect, he thought maybe it had been half a test. Post him there, at Hyperion, with John Anders—with the rest of the crew, or at least the ones who could reasonably be detained without consequence. See which carried more weight, duty and his former partner or the people he'd already betrayed.

He'd given that question the answer it deserved. He was sure of that now.

But the GA would never have had the opportunity to ask it if it hadn't been for him. His self-righteousness, his stubbornness. His refusal to admit that things just might be more complicated than he wanted to believe they were.

And the worst part of all was that he wasn't the one who'd been made to pay for those mistakes. Everyone else had, but not him. One had been _murdered_ for it—who knew whether Jace Corso would ever have caught up with him if he hadn't been on the news, identifiable, living in Derrick Moss's gleaming corporate highrise instead of on a ship in the middle of hyperspace?

But now, at last, some kind of justice had caught up with Six. And maybe he needed to let it. Maybe this was for the best; maybe he was getting exactly what he deserved.

He gathered himself, shifted a little and winced—that hurt about as much as anything he could think of, but he wanted to draw his knees up, give himself at least that much of a shield in case they got bored and decided to come after him again.

And none too soon, he thought. He still had his eyes more closed than not, but one thing Hyperion-8 and Arietis-14 had in common was the brightness of the lights, the relentless way every single inch of the prison block was illuminated. And there was a flicker in the edge of his vision: somebody moving. Somebody moving toward him.

He didn't move. Maybe it was someone new. Maybe it was someone who hadn't been around before, had been off on a work shift or something; maybe they didn't know who he was, and they didn't care, and they were going to go right past him and into their cell and leave him alone.

They didn't. They came toward him and then stopped, half a stride away, standing over him.

He sighed through his nose, the breath hitching in his throat as even that made something throb in protest. "Maybe you should consider coming back tomorrow," he said, and it was weak and a little mushmouthed, his torn-up lip swollen and clumsy, but it was audible. "You're not going to get a lot of entertainment out of me right now."

"Oh, believe me, I've got no expectation of getting entertainment out of you ever, mostly on account of that stick up your ass."

Six blinked and tipped his head sideways, peering up through one eye. "Three?"

"The one and only," Three said, caustic, spreading his hands like a performer encouraging applause. He stared down at Six a moment longer, something crossing his face that Six couldn't quite follow, and then all at once he dropped down into a crouch, gaze sharp, mouth set into a flat line. "Having a good time so far, huh?"

"Turns out Kal Varrik's arrested more than a few people who got sent here for the duration of their sentences," Six said.

"And you didn't know enough to avoid them," Three filled in for him, "because you don't remember."

"Yeah," Six allowed, and then shook himself. It wasn't like that mattered much, compared to the fact that Three was here. "But you—what are you doing here?" He struggled up away from the wall, trying to push himself into a sitting position, head swimming, gripped by sudden apprehension. "What happened? Where's Two? Did they catch you? Did the _Raza_ —"

"Whoa, whoa, hey, cut it out," Three snapped, and pushed him back until he had to settle back against the wall again. "Don't be an idiot. You look like shit, you're actively bleeding, you are _not_ getting up."

Six wanted to argue. But he was having trouble catching his breath from that much effort alone, pressing back against Three's hand on him, and his side was full of fire.

"Listen, it's fine," Three added. "I didn't get arrested. Or, well, I did, obviously, but it was on purpose."

Six could at least manage to fix him with a hard steady look.

"Really," Three insisted. He stopped, frowning down at Six, who—oh. He'd moved his hand off the wound, trying to push himself off the floor, and now it was bleeding even more than it had been a second ago. Three muttered half a dozen curses under his breath, unzipped his prison jumpsuit and then stripped off the white shirt underneath, balled it up and shoved it into place and damn, that hurt.

Six hissed a little through his teeth, clenched his fists and tensed and told himself to breathe through it. It wasn't that bad. Should have been deeper, but the guy who'd left it had missed the mark—he'd been trying to stab Six in the side, but Six had seen the strike coming and moved, and it had glanced its way up across his ribs. Long slice, close to the bone, but no worse than that; hadn't gotten anywhere near his liver or his stomach. And the guy had only gotten one shot at it. Arietis-14 had security measures to counter bladed weapons in the hands of prisoners: shivs were single-use, because the second they were detected by the system, they vaporized.

He explained about half of that to Three, handfuls of words when he could get them out, trying to get his mind off it; finally Three said, "Who cares, shut up," and leaned harder, more pressure. A wave of pain rolled over Six, full-body, like a shot from a stunner. But when it was over, his head felt clearer, and suddenly he could hang on to a real thought for more than two seconds at a time.

He put a hand over Three's on the shirt, belatedly helping. And then he frowned, and repeated, "You got arrested on purpose."

Three looked at him, eyes sharp, face abruptly still.

"Why?" Six said.

Three didn't answer, for a long moment. Just kept staring at him, unmoving except for the way his gaze was flickering searchingly over Six's face.

"You seriously don't know," he said at last. "You think we were just going to leave you in here and not do anything."

Six didn't know what to say.

It was only fair. Wasn't it? It was only reasonable. He'd left them in Hyperion-8 for a lot longer than this, with no indication whatsoever that they could count on him. Even after he'd changed his mind, he hadn't done that much—in part because they hadn't trusted him to, but he couldn't exactly blame them for that.

Two had agreed to let him back onto the _Raza_. But she hadn't been happy about it, and it would be ridiculous to expect her to be. It would be ridiculous to expect any of them to be. And surely it wasn't that big a leap from there, to think maybe they'd decide against putting themselves at risk to get him back. The rest of them had earned that kind of effort from each other. But Six had thrown that away, and he figured he knew better than to expect it to be given freely back to him.

And if anyone would understand that, he'd assumed it would be Three. It had been a grim kind of comfort to him to have Three picking at him, sneering at him, reminding him over and over again of what he'd done—that Three wasn't going to forget that he had. Not as much of a comfort as ending up in here, as actually suffering the kind of consequences he'd deserved, even if it was too late to do any real good.

He looked at Three, and then away.

And Three said slowly, "Goddamn, you do." His mouth twisted abruptly, his hand tightening on Six's side. "What the fuck is wrong with you? Where the hell do you get off thinking _we're_ the ones who are going to screw _you_ , when you're the one who—"

"What?" Six said, blank, hoarse. "No. No, it isn't like that. You don't have any reason to, that's all. None of you have any reason to. I know that."

Three stared at him. He didn't know why.

And then, behind Three, someone said, "The fuck do you think you're doing?"

Three kept looking at Six for a moment anyway, and something not unlike comprehension crossed his face, eased the line of his mouth and the set of his jaw.

And then he twisted, without taking his hand off Six's side, and looked up over his shoulder.

"The fuck makes you think I'm going to tell you?" Three shot back.

The guy who'd asked wasn't one of the ones who'd already tried to take a piece out of Six, but the sneer on his face, the cold dismissive way he looked at Six, said he'd already heard Kal Varrik was ex-GA and he wasn't happy about it.

And, sure enough, the next thing the guy said was, "You GA, too? You want a taste like he got? Because that can be arranged, no problem. You just say the word, pal."

Three gave him an assessing look. Maybe he'd decide he didn't want the trouble, Six thought. Maybe he'd figure he might as well let everybody who wanted a go have one, and worry about patching Six up later. If he'd really gotten himself in here on purpose, looking for Six, then he wasn't going to let Six get killed; but the android could probably handle anything short of that. It wasn't Three's problem.

But when Three did move, it wasn't to get out of the way. He shifted his hand, took it out from under Six's and with a press of his fingers and a sternly raised eyebrow, told Six to keep the pressure on the shirt without a word.

And then he stood up, turned around, and crossed his arms over his bare chest, jumpsuit still hanging down around his waist. "Guess you don't know who you're talking to, here. Lucky for you I'm feeling so reasonable today."

The guy scoffed. "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah," Three said, mild. "Because I'm going to tell you my name is Marcus Boone, and then I'm going to give you ten seconds to appreciate the gravity of your mistake and get the hell out of my face."

And of all things, it worked. The guy faltered, the shadow of a startled frown crossing his brow, throat working as he swallowed. "You're—Boone? The one who runs with Tanner's gang?"

Even better: this guy was far enough out of the loop that he didn't know Tanner was dead. Six schooled his face, trying to make sure he didn't look too relieved.

Three smiled, slow, wide. "Yep. That's me. Ten," he added.

"But Tanner's not—he's not in here."

"No," Three agreed patiently, "but all that means is he's out there waiting for you, and he's not going to be happy. Pretty sure that was nine and eight."

The guy backed off half a step, ducking his head a little. "You know that's Kal Varrik, right? He's a GA—"

"—officer, John Anders's partner, yeah, I know," Three said. "Seven. Look, you're small-time, I get it. You've never had anybody on the inside before. But Tanner's operation is big-league, and that means sometimes wheels need greasing. Six. So you back the fuck off Kal Varrik, and you tell everybody else in here to do the same. Got it?"

"Yeah," the guy said, quick. "Yeah, of course."

"Great! And you keep your hands off him. Five."

Something in the guy's face changed. "Right, sure. You got dibs. I get you."

Six didn't understand what he meant by it, by the way he'd emphasized the word. But then Three laughed, a short incredulous bark of it, and said, "Yeah, exactly. His ass is mine in here, nobody else touches him. You hit the nail on the head. Four."

"Okay, no problem," the guy said, conciliatory, taking another step away. "It's cool. Everybody'll know by tomorrow. I'll make sure of it."

"Three," Three said warmly, and the guy backed away and turned around.

There were half a dozen other prisoners standing around the edges of this corner of the cell block, men and women, equally tough and equally disdainful. But a ripple went through them all, a shift in stance and attention and attitude, when the guy turned around and left Six and Three alone—instead of, presumably, hauling off to teach one or both of them a lesson. Circumstances were evidently different than they'd thought, and they knew it even without having to be told.

"What an asshole," Three muttered, turning back to Six, crouching down again. He put his hand back where it had been, shoving it under Six's, their fingers bumping and tangling. And then he looked at Six, with those sharp pale eyes, and he said, "For the record, you're an idiot."

"Three," Six said.

"I mean it," Three insisted. "I fucking—I saw you, okay? I saw you. You turned around and you walked right back into them on purpose. You had to know you were letting the rest of us off the hook. And okay, so you don't remember every single person Kal Varrik arrested, but you had to know your odds sucked, especially after Hyperion. You had to know there was probably going to be somebody in here who recognized you."

Six looked away.

"So you got yourself sent to prison for us," Three summarized, "where you _knew_ you were going to get your ex-GA ass handed to you, and you didn't think we were going to give a shit. Not because you don't trust us, which would legitimately make some kind of sense, but because you've actually been listening to me every time I've told you you can go to hell. That's just—that's _fantastic_. That's great. I cannot fucking _believe_ you—"

"Three," Six said. "It's fine. You were right. I don't belong on the ship just because I want to. It's not up to me. I told you the truth, when we were stuck down there. I'm sorry I did it. I was trying to figure out who I was, trying to make the choice Kal Varrik would have made, and I screwed up. And I know you don't trust me, I know you aren't going to forgive me—"

"I told you I'd give you a chance," Three interrupted furiously. "I resented you so goddamn much, you stupid son of a bitch, and then you have to go and—"

He ground to a halt, throat working. His hand spasmed, clenched tight, around his shirt pressed against Six's side. He shook his head, and made a sudden unsteady motion with his free hand toward the bruising that was blooming red-black across Six's arms and face, Six's shredded bloody knuckles; Six's nose, Six's split ripped-up lip. He looked—he looked a way Six had never seen him before, tense and fierce and almost wild, jaw tight, eyes brilliant.

He shook his head again, opened his mouth and then closed it again, pressed his lips together into a line so hard they went pale.

"You stupid son of a bitch," he said again, hushed this time, ragged. "Fuck you," and then he swayed in, sudden and startling, and touched his mouth to Six's.

Six sucked in a breath, half surprise and half the pain of pressure against his bleeding lip. But Three didn't stop, and Six probably should have moved away, done something, but he—he didn't want to.

He held still instead, held still and let it happen and tried to kiss back a little, and it was slow and clumsy and tasted like blood, but that was fine.

He didn't think—he hadn't thought Three would even think about it, would even entertain the thought of liking him at all, after what he'd done.

But he must have been wrong.

Three broke away. It was quiet between them for a beat, as they sat there and breathed and didn't quite look at each other.

Six cleared his throat. "You realize that isn't going to make it look less like you are," he said hoarsely.

Three looked at him, mouth red, face unreadable.

"Fucking me," Six clarified.

Three looked at him silently for a second; and then one corner of his mouth quirked. "Yeah, well," he said. "It's fine. Good cover. Keeps them off your back, gives us an excuse to stick together all the time. It's going to be a few days before the ship can get in touch, so."

"All right," Six said.

Three laughed, half a breath through his nose. "Because _that's_ the one thing in the universe you don't want to argue about," he muttered. He still had a hand at Six's face, fingers at his jaw and thumb crossing Six's cheek; he moved it a little, and his face turned serious again, and he said, "I came for you. Okay? I came for you, and they're coming for us, and we're not leaving without you."

Six closed his eyes. It sounded true. He wanted to believe it. And maybe he would, if he gave himself a chance.

"Okay," he said, and Three leaned in and pressed their foreheads together, and then kissed him again.


End file.
